Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today we are going to learn about diatonic chords, and how to build a chord progression,
which in case you ever want to get into songwriting or say, playing with a rock band or jazz band, this is going to be big.
let's come to the piano to learn what diatonic chords are and how to play them.
You actually already are very familiar with some diatonic chords even though we've never called them by that name.
Diatonic is just a fancy word that means belonging to a certain key.
For example, let's say for now that we are in the key of C major.
The C major scale has these notes, so we would say these pitches C D E F G A B C
Okay, each of those is called a pitch, and each of those pitches are diatonic in the key of C.
So D is diatonic in the key of C. F is diatonic in the key of C. It just means it belongs in the key of C.
F-sharp however, is not diatonic. It's not in that family if you will. C-sharp is not diatonic, but all these white keys C D E F G A B C, those are diatonic.
Now, let's say that we're in the key of D for a minute.
So these are the diatonic pitches in the key of D. We have a D E F-sharp G A B C-sharp D. All of those are diatonic.
Now F is not diatonic in the key of D. It doesn't belong in that family.
B-flat is not diatonic, but C-sharp is, F-sharp is, D is.
Diatonic just means it belongs in that key. It's part of the family of notes that make up that key.
Now let's talk about diatonic chords.
Let's go back to the key of C. So remember, basically every white key on your entire piano is diatonic in the key of C.
The Black Keys are all not diatonic. So if we're in the key of C,
let's look at every possible diatonic chord.
You already know this chord, which we've called all along as the I chord.
Another name for the I chord is tonic, and that's our first diatonic chord.
Now, we also have what's called the ii chord.
All we have to do is move up to the second note of the C major scale and build a new triad with D as the root, the second note of the scale.
D F A we would call the ii chord. It's also a diatonic chord.
Okay, we can keep going from there.
By the way, that's a D minor chord. The D minor chord is a diatonic chord in the key of C.
Now if we come up to E, and again build a new triad all using only the notes diatonic to the key of C, remember we're sticking with just white keys.
Now we have the iii chord.
E G B
We go up another step to the fourth note of the scale, and we get the IV chord.
That's an F major chord. F A C is the IV chord in the key of C.
In the past, we've played the four chord with the C on the bottom.
Remember, we can invert a chord by moving a note around.
That whether the C's here or whether the C's here, it's still the same chord.
So this also is a IV chord in the key of C, but for now let's keep the root on the bottom to keep things simple. So there's the IV chord.
If we go up here a step, now we have the V chord. G B D makes the V chord and that's a G major chord.
If we come up another step, we get the vi chord A C E
You'll notice with our Roman numerals that if it's a minor chord, we use lowercase.
The vi chord is A minor.
Now if we come up one more step we get to the vii chord, which is a B diminished chord.
Now this is a new kind of chord that we've never talked about before. You already know about major and minor.
Now this one if you listen carefully, you'll hear that it has a different sound from major or minor. Listen to it again.
It's considered one of the more tense chords, or you know, it has what's called dissonance.
In music dissonance means the notes kind of rub together in a
in a way that's not necessarily pleasing to listen to.
Hear that's kind of unsettled.
It's a chord that's often used for like suspense.
So that's the B diminished chord, and then if we come up one step higher we get to back to the one chord C major.
So every single one of those chords is diatonic in the key of C, and that's every possible chord.
The I chord, ii chord, iii chord, IV chord, V chord, vi chord, vii chord, back to the I chord.
Now like I said, if you want to be a composer, if you want to be a songwriter, if you want to play jazz or rock,
you need to know your diatonic chords, because these are like if you're a cook
you would need to know, or a chef, you need to know all your ingredients and how they work together.
These diatonic chords are basically the ingredients a composer or a songwriter uses to make music,
and they would mix them up in different orders which I'll show you about later,
but for right now let's go through together and play and name every diatonic chord in the key of C.
I'm going to do it hands together. You're welcome to choose just one hand if you want to challenge yourself and do both hands that's good too.
I'd like you to name these c ...